Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, the last Mitford sister, dies aged 94 | UK news | The Guardian The Mitford sisters Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, the last Mitford sister, dies aged 94 Youngest Mitford sister was close to John F Kennedy, knew Churchill and took tea with Hitler at 17 Wednesday 24 September 2014 18.08 EDT First published on Wednesday 24 September 2014 09.45 EDT Close This article is 2 years old Deborah, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, the youngest and last-surviving of the celebrated Mitford sisters , has died at the age of 94, her son has said. As wife of the 11th Duke of Devonshire, whom she married in 1941, Deborah Vivien Cavendish was mistress of Chatsworth House , one of the grandest estates in England. But it is perhaps because of her position as the youngest of the six Mitford sisters that “Debo”, as she was called throughout her lifetime, will best be remembered.

The aristocratic sisters, daughters of David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, fascinated and at times appalled society from the 1930s onwards. Nancy , the oldest sibling, was a novelist and journalist who lightly fictionalised the siblings’ upbringing in a series of comic novels; Diana married Oswald Mosley at Goebbels’ house with Hitler as a guest of honour, and was interned during the war because of her Nazi sympathies; Unity was a devotee and close friend of the Führer who shot herself in the head (but survived) when war broke out; Jessica (“Decca”) renounced her privileged background to become a lifelong communist, eventually emigrating to the US and becoming a civil rights activist. Only Pamela , the second-oldest daughter, lived a quiet life largely out of the public eye in the countryside. A brother, Tom, is frequently overlooked altogether. The Prince of Wales paid tribute last night, saying she was someone he “adored and admired greatly”. “She was a unique personality with a wonderfully original approach to life, and a memorable turn of phrase to match that originality,” he said.

“The joy, pleasure and amusement she gave to so many, particularly through her books, as well as the contribution she made to Derbyshire throughout her time at Chatsworth, will not easily be forgotten and we shall miss her so very much.” Though the duchess called her memoirs, published in 2010 at the age of 90, Wait for Me! because she had always felt she was catching up with her siblings, Deborah’s own life was hardly uneventful. Born in 1920, like all her sisters she was not sent to school because her father disapproved of over educating girls and thought hockey would make their ankles fat. She was very close to John F Kennedy (whom she called “the Loved One”) and knew Churchill, took tea with Hitler at the age of 17, and attended the Queen’s coronation. From an early age, however, she was more interested in keeping chickens than in politics and managed to stay on good terms with all members of her ideologically polarised family, insisting that “their politics were nothing to do with me”.

She met her husband, Andrew Cavendish, as a debutante when they were both 18, and they married in 1941. He was the younger son of the 10th duke of Devonshire, but the death of his older brother during the war led to his inheriting a portfolio of estates, of which the 175-room Chatsworth House in Derbyshire was merely the largest, when his father died in 1950. Potentially crippling death duties forced the duke to sell off properties and heirlooms and to open Chatsworth fully to the public. Deborah became actively involved in the running of the estate and was the driving force behind its shop and cafe, earning the nickname the “housewife duchess” – the duke credited her with much of their financial nous. Deborah did not lose her taste for luxury, retaining the tradition of gold-leafing the exterior window frames because she believed it lasted longer than painting them, but she insisted that she hated snobbery, saying: “I think class is the biggest pest that has ever been invented.” She was also, perhaps surprisingly, a devoted fan of Elvis Presley, collecting memorabilia to decorate her office at Chatsworth.

Alongside the colourful lives of her siblings, Deborah experienced personal tragedy: she and the duke had six children, of whom three died at birth. “It was in the war and people were thinking of other things,” she said of the death of her first son in 1941., “so it was skated over by everyone as a fact of life. But it was an awful blow” There was private pain, too, over her husband’s alcoholism which she said nearly ended their marriage, though she was more relaxed about his many infidelities. “He may have been difficult at times,” she said, “but he was never boring.” Her son Peregrine, the current (12th) Duke of Devonshire, confirmed her death in a statement.

Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire has died aged 94 | Daily Mail Online Last of the Mitford sisters the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire has died aged 94 Born Deborah Mitford in 1920, she was the youngest of the six Mitford girls Prince of Wales paid tribute to her 'unique personality' and 'original approach to life' She had tea with Hitler, with whom her sister, Unity, was besotted, in 1937 Married Lord Andrew Cavendish in 1941 and moved into Chatsworth House Known as Debo, the Duchess had seven children of whom three survived Her son, Peregrine, 70, became the 12th Duke when Andrew died in 2004 They also had daughters Lady Emma, now 71, and Lady Sophia, now 57 After her husband's death, she left Chatsworth, Derbys, for nearby vicarage The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, the last Mitford sister, has died aged 94 - Telegraph The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, the last Mitford sister, has died aged 94 The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, the last Mitford sister, has

 died aged 94, her son has confirmed The Deborah Cavendish Duchess of Devonshire has died Photo: REX FEATURES By Anita Singh , Art and Entertainment Editor 2:32PM BST 24 Sep 2014 Follow The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, last of the Mitford sisters, has died.

She was 94. The duchess, known to friends as Debo, was the youngest of the six aristocratic Mitford girls who scandalised and delighted high society. She married Lord Andrew Cavendish and they became the 11th Duke and Duchess of Devonshire in 1950, residing at the magnificent Chatsworth House in Derbyshire until her husband’s death in 2004. Her son, the 12th Duke, said in a statement: “It is with great sadness that I have to inform you that Deborah, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, passed away peacefully this morning. Related Articles 24 Sep 2014 “An announcement about funeral arrangements will be made shortly.” In her later years, the Dowager Duchess lived in a cottage on the Chatsworth estate, where she was a much-loved figure. The Mitfords, daughters of the 2nd Baron Redesdale, were one of the 20th century's most colourful families. Unity became infatuated with Adolf Hitler and shot herself in the head in Munich's English Garden when Britain declared war on Germany.

The bullet failed to kill her but she suffered irreversible brain damage and died in 1948, aged 33. Diana, regarded as the family beauty, married the fascist leader Oswald Mosley and was interned in Holloway prison from 1940 to 1943. Jessica, known as Decca, joined the Communist Party and ran away to Spain to cover the Civil War. Nancy became the best-selling author of novels including Love In A Cold Climate. MI5 files released in 2003 showed that she was instrumental in keeping Diana in prison, writing to warn that her sister was "a ruthless and shrewd egotist, a devoted Fascist and admirer of Hitler". Deborah was the sensible one, nicknamed the "housewife Mitford". Another sister, Pam, also remained free of controversy. The girls had a brother, Tom, who was killed in Burma in 1945. Last Mitford sister, Deborah, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, dies at 94 - BBC News BBC News Last Mitford sister, Deborah, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, dies at 94 24 September 2014 Read more about sharing.

Close share panel Media captionThe Dowager Duchess of Devonshire spoke of their uncertainty when her family first inherited the Chatsworth estate Deborah, the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, and the last surviving Mitford sister, has died aged 94. Her son, the Duke of Devonshire, announced the death in a statement from Chatsworth House, her stately home. Prince Charles said he was "saddened" by the news, saying he "adored and admired" Deborah and would "miss her so very much". The Mitford sisters fascinated - and sometimes scandalised - British society in the 1940s. Unity was a friend of Hitler; Diana, the second wife of British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley; Jessica, a left-wing activist, and Nancy, a novelist and historian. Deborah, like her elder sister Pamela, was more focused on home life. Image copyright J. A.

Hampton Image caption Left to right: Pamela Herman Hodge, the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire and Lady Margaret Ogilvy at a point-to-point steeplechase in Oxfordshire, in February 1938 Nonetheless, along with her siblings, during her lifetime she moved in the same circles as Sir Winston Churchill, John F Kennedy and Evelyn Waugh. She also accompanied her sister Unity to tea with Hitler in 1937, was painted by Lucian Freud, and amassed a collection of Elvis Presley memorabilia. Nicknamed the "housewife duchess", she made Chatsworth in Derbyshire one of the most successful and profitable stately homes in England after marrying Andrew Cavendish - who later became the 11th Duke of Devonshire - in 1941. The statement from her son said: "It is with great sadness that I have to inform you that Deborah, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, has passed away peacefully this morning." It added that an announcement about funeral arrangements would be made shortly. Prince Charles said: "My wife and I were deeply saddened to learn of the death of the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, whom both of us adored and admired greatly.

"She was a unique personality with a wonderfully original approach to life, and a memorable turn of phrase to match that originality. "The joy, pleasure and amusement she gave to so many, particularly through her books, as well as the contribution she made to Derbyshire throughout her time at Chatsworth, will not easily be forgotten and we shall miss her so very much." Media captionDeborah spoke with the same distinctive Mitford voice as her sisters, reports the BBC's Nick Higham Born Deborah Vivien Freeman-Mitford on 31 March 1920, the duchess was the sixth daughter of the 2nd Baron Redesdale. The Mitfords' childhood at their family home in the Oxfordshire village of Swinbrook was immortalised in Nancy's novels, The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate. Her parents made a poor job of hiding their disappointment that Deborah had not been born a boy, leaving Thomas their only son. Image copyright PA Image caption Deborah was the youngest Mitford sister The Mitfords' father disapproved of educating girls, famously insisting that hockey would make their ankles fat, and Deborah spent her formative years skating and hunting.

Her sister Unity's infatuation with Hitler saw the young Deborah invited to tea with the German dictator, although the visit made little impression on her. "If you sat in a room with Churchill," she later recalled, "you were aware of this tremendous charisma. Kennedy had it too. But Hitler didn't - not to me anyway." At Chatsworth, the Duchess took on a major role in running the house and its garden, which have been used in a number of film and TV productions, and she ran the estate's farm shop. In July 2002, the duchess and her husband spoke out against the government's proposed ban on fox hunting. Made a dame in 1999, she became the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire in 2004 after her husband died and their son inherited his title. She penned a number of books including the autobiographical Wait for Me: Memoirs of the Youngest Mitford Sister, which was published in 2010.

The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire obituary | UK news | The Guardian The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire obituary Last of the famous Mitford sisters, she became a successful chatelaine of Chatsworth House The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, in 2008. She was born Deborah Mitford, the youngest of seven children, who included Nancy, the writer, and Diana, who married Oswald Mosley. Photograph: Christopher Thomond Wednesday 24 September 2014 13.36 EDT First published on Wednesday 24 September 2014 13.36 EDT Share on Messenger Close Deborah, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, who has died aged 94, was for more than half a century the chatelaine of Chatsworth House , the great stately home and estate in Derbyshire. In that time she did much to promote it as a favourite public destination. But she started out as the youngest of the Mitford sisters – the country chick of that sophisticated brood, the extraordinary offspring of Lord Redesdale and his wife, Sydney.

Although sister Nancy's claim that Debo could imitate a hen expelling an egg might have been a joke, Debo did drive the cart delivering the Mitford henhouse eggs to the station. While Nancy, Diana , Unity and Decca pursued literature, fascism, Hitler and socialism, Debo's best friend in childhood was the family's old groom, Hooper, "the human end of the horses; the stables were my heaven". She was born at Asthall Manor, Oxfordshire, but equine bliss ended at 16 when the Mitfords sold their next country house: at 17, Debo's closest sibling, Jessica – "Decca" – eloped without a word, a letdown slightly ameliorated by the £1,000 libel settlement the Daily Express paid Debo for wrongly naming her as the runaway, which she squandered on a fur coat. She came out as a debutante in 1938 at a ball given by her doting father at the Mitfords' London house, and enjoyed the last real season before the second world war.

Unity, the Hitler groupie, wrote from Germany: "Swyne [a Debo nickname] seems to be having a wonderful time … who will the romance be with?" The answer was Lord Andrew Cavendish , also 18, younger son of the Duke of Devonshire, encountered at the races. He joined the Coldstream Guards, while Debo and her mother went to Berne to collect Unity, who had put a bullet through her brain but survived, severely damaged; they coped with Unity's resultant moodiness and incontinence through the first year of war. But then, nothing organic fazed Debo – when travelling to Mull by train, she milked her beloved goat in the first-class waiting room at Stirling: "Which I should not have done since I only had a third-class ticket." The Duchess of Devonshire at Chatsworth. Photograph: Chatsworth House Trust Debo wrote to Diana – in Holloway for supporting her fascist husband, Oswald Mosley – about her impending nuptials: "I do wish you weren't in prison.

It will be vile not having you to go shopping with, only we're so poor I shan't have much of a trousseau." Debo married Cavendish in the bomb-damaged St Bartholomew the Great, in London : "Two houses had been totally destroyed in our street the night before, and all the glass was blown out of our house, so my mother put up wallpaper rolls as pretend curtains and went on with the wedding." She followed him around the country: "I do disgusting work now, do feel sorry for me, it's in the YMCA canteen and it's very embarrassing because they all copy my voice," both its extraordinary vowels and the racy Mitford lingo. But Debo was never a serious snob, considering class an irritant: "The biggest pest that has ever been invented". Her husband became heir to the dukedom on the death of his brother in 1944 and succeeded unexpectedly early when his father died in 1950, 14 weeks before the date on which the estates would have escaped 80% death duties.

The couple inherited a directory of property, principally Chatsworth House, with 175 rooms, 50 of them huge, and a £5m revenue bill incurring £1,000 interest a day. It took 17 years to clear the debt, with failed appeals to the high court and the sale of Rembrandts, a Poussin and superfluous ancestral accommodation, including Hardwick Hall, also in Derbyshire. In 1959 they moved in "over the shop" at Chatsworth, made over to a trust, and they kept an Irish holiday castle, Lismore. Nancy, a connoisseur of aristocratic chilblains, wrote to Diana: "Debo has become the sort of English duchess who doesn't feel the cold." They transferred to Chatsworth to help repair it for the first round of stately-home-openings. Debo did the decor, the grandest of shabby chic – she continued the house tradition of gold-leafing the exterior window frames, but only because it lasted longer than paint and she liked the glow on gloomy November days.

Nancy teased Debo that invitations to writers and artists to stay had more to do with interiors than intellect: "They are terrible wreckers, worse than puppies and will give a mellow old look to the house in no time at all. I expect that's why you have them." Not quite fair, perhaps: the Duke commissioned Lucian Freud to paint Debo's portrait when she was 34 ("That's the dowager duchess; it was taken the year before she died," asserted a visitor); and, although Debo claimed to be no reader and only a letter-writer, there were corridors stacked with Mitford letters, she wrote a history of Chatsworth, an estate shop steady-seller, and a wicked collected journalism volume, Counting My Chickens ... and Other Home Thoughts (2001). She was an unlikely devotee of Elvis Presley, and King memorabilia decorated her Chatsworth office. Such a beauty when young, she said; she had visited his rival stately home, Graceland, and thought it very moving. The Duke and Duchess of Devonshire in the library at Chatsworth.

Photograph: Chatsworth House Trust She was a competent businesswoman ("I am very good at spending money and she is very good at making it," conceded the Duke), managing her share portfolio and the Chatsworth enterprises; hers was the signature printed on the labels of Chatsworth Food Ltd's chutney and Cumberland sauce; she served in the farm shop "until they installed the mechanical till which I was too stupid to operate". But the estate's 6,000 farmed acres, which Debo could name field by field – Mrs Vickers's Breeches, Big Backsides, Old Zac's Pingle – stimulated her more than the house's silver steward and the 2,000 lightbulbs, which were powered by an updated wonder of Victorian hydraulic engineering. As she aged, she took delight in the continuity of the details in the house, securing her closet every day with a rare late-17th-century lock.

Few other presidents of the Royal Agricultural Society or the Royal Smithfield Club could recite a flock's afflictions as she could – "Orf scrapie, swayback, blackleg, water mouth or rattlebelly, scab and footrot, scad or scald" – or work with a sheepdog, and she appreciated a whippet or two about her feet. Debo's book Farm Animals (1991) featured rare breeds of fowl, Buff Cochins and Wesummers, which she raised; the Chatsworth farmyard was a teaching aid for cityfolk. She liked to cite the boy from a school in Sheffield who watched the milking demo. "He gave me such a look and said, 'I think it's the most disgooosting thing I've ever seen in me life, I'm never going to drink milk again." The Devonshire marriage weathered revelations during an Old Bailey trial in 1985 that the Duke, for all the family motto "secure by caution", had been careless with his chequebooks while furnishing the London flats of young female acquaintances.

He was generous to his Duchess, too, over the years commissioning a collection of bejewelled insect brooches, which she wore pinned to ribbons as they left quite dreadful holes in frocks. In 1999 she was made a DCVO, a dame in the Royal Victorian Order. At the 50th anniversary of the couple's accession to the ducal title, Debo swanned into the marquee in a costume created for a Victorian duchess at a 19th-century Chatsworth thrash: she found its whaleboning very supportive. Following her husband's death in 2004 she remained active as a writer, producing a memoir, Wait for Me! , in 2010. Three of her children died at birth. Her son Peregrine succeeded to the dukedom, and she is also survived by her daughters Emma and Sophia.

• Deborah Vivien Cavendish, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, stately home owner and writer, born 31 March 1920; died 24 September 2014 Youngest Mitford sister was close to John F Kennedy, knew Churchill and took tea with Hitler at 17 Published: 24 Sep 2014 Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire: The Last of the Mitford Sisters | A Little Bird Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire: The Last of the Mitford Sisters 2 March 2016, 10.00am Oh, cometh the day! The possessions that belonged to the Duchess of Devonshire, the youngest of the Mitford sisters, who died aged 94 in 2014, are being sold at Sotheby’s on March 2nd. The objects, furniture and paintings all come from her final home, The Old Vicarage at Edensor on the Chatsworth estate, where she moved from Chatsworth itself after the death of her husband, the 11th Duke, in 2004.

They are things she acquired or was given, rather than inherited Chatsworth pieces, which means they are all personal and interesting, but also affordable, and, crucially, the right scale for most of us. So there are armchairs upholstered in fabrics chosen by Her Grace (lovely chintzes and stripes), log baskets, hat stands, and pieces of brown furniture mostly valued at under £1000. But there are also quirkier items such as the Duchess’s collection of Elvis Presley ephemera (est. £500 – £1000), all kinds of doggy and chicken things: porcelain pieces, paintings, tureens (the chicken tureens are especially lust-worthy), as well as all the stuff you’d expect from an upper class, well-run house owned by someone with impeccable taste: the essential vases, paintings, candelabra, rugs, inkstands, asparagus plates, Staffordshire and Meissen figures, signed first editions, and precious insect brooches that make life tolerable.

To bid on any of the lots, you have to register in advance (it takes 24 hours to get approval) and you can either follow the auction live online on March 2nd, or indeed go to Sotheby’s in person, or leave an absentee bid which the auctioneer will place for you. And actually, there are plenty of estimates that begin below £100, so it’s not inconceivable that you might pick up a lovely object imbued with Mitford history for a relative snip. But what’s more fun is just nosing through the catalogue and reading the descriptions of these often deeply personal objects and things and learning what they meant to their owner. When: Last of famous Mitford sisters dies at 94 | SBS News 25 Sep 2014 - 6:12am Last of famous Mitford sisters dies at 94 The last of the unconventional Mitford sisters, Deborah, the dowager duchess of Devonshire, has died, aged 94. Source: 0 Deborah, the dowager duchess of Devonshire, the last of the witty, unconventional Mitford sisters, has died aged 94.

Brought up in Oxfordshire, England, Deborah was the youngest of the six sisters, but shunned the political alliances for which the Mitford girls were famous. One of the sisters, Unity, was a friend of Adolf Hitler, while another, Diana, was the second wife of Sir Oswald Mosley, the founder of the British Union of Fascists. Untouched by the famous associations, Deborah told the Daily Telegraph in 2012 that she took tea with Hitler during a visit to Munich in 1937 with her mother and sister. He made little impression. "Well, I've never been very interested in politics, you see," she told the newspaper. "And the truth is that I didn't give it much thought. If you sat in a room with Churchill, you were aware of this tremendous charisma. Kennedy had it too. But Hitler didn't - not to me anyway." The striking "Debo" was more focused on a domestic life, marrying Andrew Cavendish, who later became the 11th Duke of Devonshire. Together they transformed Chatsworth House from a deteriorating pile into one of Britain's most visited historical properties.

She ran the estate's Chatsworth Farm Shop, selling local game, meat, eggs, cheese, fruit and vegetables. After her husband's death in 2004, she moved to a village on the Chatsworth estate. Less-well known than her famous siblings, she was nonetheless an author in her own right. She wrote Wait for Me!: Memoirs of the Youngest Mitford Sister and Home to Roost: And Other Peckings, among other books. Her son, the Duke of Devonshire, announced her death on Tuesday in a statement. She is survived by her son and daughters, Lady Emma Tennant and Lady Sophie Topley. News - Last Mitford Sister Dies, Aged 94 | Sufficient Velocity Hyperreality Deborah, the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, and the last surviving Mitford sister, has died aged 94. Her son, the Duke of Devonshire, announced the death in a statement from Chatsworth House, her stately home. Prince Charles said he was "saddened" by the news, saying he "adored and admired" Deborah and would "miss her so very much".

The Mitford sisters fascinated - and sometimes scandalised - British society in the 1940s. Unity was a friend of Hitler; Diana, the second wife of British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley; Jessica, a left-wing activist, and Nancy, a novelist and historian. Deborah, like her elder sister Pamela, was more focused on home life. Left to right: Pamela Herman Hodge, the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire and Lady Margaret Ogilvy at a point-to-point steeplechase in Oxfordshire, in February 1938 Nonetheless, along with her siblings, during her lifetime she moved in the same circles as Sir Winston Churchill, John F Kennedy and Evelyn Waugh. She also accompanied her sister Unity to tea with Hitler in 1937, was painted by Lucian Freud, and amassed a collection of Elvis Presley memorabilia. Nicknamed the "housewife duchess", she made Chatsworth in Derbyshire one of the most successful and profitable stately homes in England after marrying Andrew Cavendish - who later became the 11th Duke of Devonshire - in 1941.

The statement from her son said: "It is with great sadness that I have to inform you that Deborah, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, has passed away peacefully this morning." It added that an announcement about funeral arrangements would be made shortly. Prince Charles said: "My wife and I were deeply saddened to learn of the death of the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, whom both of us adored and admired greatly. "She was a unique personality with a wonderfully original approach to life, and a memorable turn of phrase to match that originality.

"The joy, pleasure and amusement she gave to so many, particularly through her books, as well as the contribution she made to Derbyshire throughout her time at Chatsworth, will not easily be forgotten and we shall miss her so very much." Dowager Duchess of Devonshire - obituary Dowager Duchess of Devonshire - obituary At ease: the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire at Chatsworth in 2005 24 September 2015 • 3:30pm The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, who has died aged 94, was the youngest and last of the celebrated Mitford sisters, and the chatelaine of Chatsworth, the “Palace of the Peak” in Derbyshire, which from the 1950s onwards she made into both a glorious public spectacle and, really for the first time, a consummately stylish private home. She was born Deborah Vivien Freeman-Mitford on March 31 1920, the sixth daughter of the eccentric 2nd Lord Redesdale, well-known to readers of Nancy Mitford’s novels as “Uncle Matthew”.

“Debo” (as she was always known) was repeatedly assured throughout her childhood by her eldest sister Nancy that “everybody cried when you were born” on account of her being yet another girl. The Mitford family in 1933 with Debo on bottom right Debo took refuge in quaintly odd pursuits. Another sister, Jessica (“Decca”) Mitford, described her spending “silent hours in the chicken house learning to do an exact imitation of the look of pained concentration that comes over a hen’s face when it is laying an egg, and each morning she methodically checked over and listed in a notebook the stillbirths reported in the vital statistics columns of The Times”. As the youngest in a family of seven, Debo was constantly and mercilessly teased, despite the bellowing championship of her father. She was passionately fond of the country and country pursuits, and did not suffer from the brilliant, restless boredom so well-documented by her sisters. None of the girls was sent to school, as their father thought education for girls unnecessary; a succession of governesses was employed, one of whom, Miss Pratt, had her charges playing Racing Demon daily from 9am until lunchtime.

Debo on her way to Ascot in 1938 Credit: TOPHAM PICTUREPOINT As a girl Debo was a fine skater, and was invited to join the British junior team; but the idea was vetoed by her mother. As an adolescent she witnessed several scandals surrounding her sisters — Diana’s divorce and remarriage, Jessica’s elopement, Unity’s involvement with Hitler — as well as the disintegration of her parents’ marriage. She was famous for having chanted as a child, in moments of distress: “One day he’ll come along, the Duke I love.” When she married Lord Andrew Cavendish in 1941, however, he was a mere second son. Debo wrote to her sister, Diana Mosley, then in Holloway prison: “I expect we shall be terrificly [sic] poor but think how nice to have as many dear dogs and things as one likes without anyone to say they must get off the furniture.” Debo remained surrounded by dogs for the rest of her life.

In The House: A Portrait of Chatsworth (1982), the delightful and bestselling book she wrote, in between doing a lot of sums to illustrate that 365 ordinary-sized residences could fit into The House, with its 7,873 panes of glass and 53 lavatories, the Duchess took care to inform the reader: “It’s a terrible place to house-train a puppy.” The Duke and Duchess on their wedding day in 1941 Credit: RAYMONDS In 1944 Andrew’s elder brother was killed in action, and in 1950 the 10th Duke unexpectedly died. The Devonshires were left with 80 per cent death duties which took 17 years to settle. In 1959 they moved to Chatsworth, uninhabited since before the war. When she had first seen the house after the war she had thought it “sad, dark, cold and dirty. It wasn’t like a house at all, but more like a barracks.” It had not been redecorated for decades, and during the war had been home to a girls’ boarding school.

But Debo embraced her role of chatelaine gaily, as she set about redecorating the house. “Debo has become the sort of English duchess who doesn’t feel the cold,” reported Nancy, disconsolately. The Duchess was both beautiful and deceptively literate, although exceptionally modest. Lucian Freud painted her when she was 34, and Debo used to delight in the story of how an old woman was heard remarking, as she stood before the painting: “That’s the Dowager Duchess. It was taken the year before she died.” When the painting was completed, Freud allowed the Duke and Duchess to see it at his studio. “Someone else was already there,” she later recalled. “Andrew looked long at the picture until the other man asked, 'Who is that?’ 'It’s my wife.’ 'Well, thank God it’s not mine’.” She also sat for Annigoni, to whom she found herself apologising for her face: “I know it’s not the sort you like.” The artist replied, not very graciously: “Oh well, it doesn’t matter, it’s not your fault.” The Duchess kept aloof from her family’s literary and political pursuits.

She visited her Fascist sister Diana in prison, and her Communist sister Decca in California, keeping a light touch with both. After visiting Decca and doing the rounds of her Communist friends, Debo sent Decca a photograph of herself and her husband, dressed in their ducal robes for a coronation, garlanded with orders, chains and jewels, staring stonily ahead. Beneath the photo she wrote: “Andrew and me being active.” Nancy used to address letters to her sister “Nine, Duchess of Devonshire”, her contention being that Debo never developed beyond the mental age of nine. Certainly the Duchess always maintained that she never read books and that her favourite reading matter was the British goatkeepers’ monthly journal, Fancy Fowl magazine and Beatrix Potter. The epigraph in her book The House is taken from Hobbes, who was tutor to the 2nd and 3rd Dukes of Devonshire: “Reading is a pernicious habit.

It destroys all originality of sentiment.” The Duchess at Chatsworth in 2003 Credit: CAMERA PRESS Chatsworth, however, was always filled with literati, and Patrick Leigh Fermor, a great friend, was determined that Debo was a closet reader, who sneaked books the way alcoholics sneak whisky. As a writer, she was a natural storyteller with a knack for the telling phrase and a delight in human eccentricities. Certainly The House is a wonderfully rich and beautifully written work. It is organised around a Handbook of Chatsworth written in 1844 in the form of a letter from the “Bachelor Duke” (the 6th) to his sister and is full of very funny accounts of the foibles of earlier dukes and duchesses. Among other stories, it chronicles the war waged against woodworm by the wife of the 9th Duke (the former Lady Evelyn Fitzmaurice). Believing concussion to be the answer, the formidable beldame kept a little hammer in her bag to bang the furniture where they lurked.

The Duchess showed acute commercial flair in raising money for the Chatsworth estate, making a nonsense of her sister Nancy’s generalisation in Noblesse Oblige that aristocrats are no good at making money. She presided over the bread, cake, jam and chutney industries which grew up to feed the farm shop, which was described by the late Hugh Massingberd in The Daily Telegraph as “every greedy child’s idea of what a shop should be”. Although the house had been open to the public ever since it was built, it was not until 1947 that the revenue from visitors went towards its upkeep. In 1973 the Duchess set up the Farmyard at Chatsworth, “to explain to the children that food is produced by farmers who also look after the land and that the two functions are inextricably mixed”. A little boy from Sheffield watched the milking, then told the Duchess: “It’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ll never drink milk again.” Visitors to Chatsworth are able to buy items such as souvenirs, books, porcelain, knitwear, while the Farm Shop sells estate produce.

A mail order business was established, along with cafés, restaurants and a commercial catering business. Chatsworth Carpenters was an especially successful venture. The Duchess, in her gardener’s apron, was for many years a familiar sight at the Chelsea Flower Show, where she was to be seen busily selling furniture fit for a stately home to the owners of small town gardens. The 11th Duke once observed: “My wife is far more important to Chatsworth than I am.” He added: “She is on the bossy side, of course; but I’ve always liked that in a woman.” She dealt heroically with her husband’s philandering nature and his weakness for alcohol, and the marriage was a happy one. Despite living in a house overflowing with masterpieces by such artists as Rembrandt, Veronese, Murillo, Poussin and Reynolds, the Duchess always maintained that Beatrix Potter was her favourite artist, and Miss Potter’s enchanted world may indeed be the key to appreciating the genius loci of Chatsworth.

The Duchess with a herd of British Limousin cows on the Chatsworth estate Credit: ANDREW CROWLEY The Duchess was an ardent conservationist of vernacular architecture and was president of the Derbyshire Historic Buildings Trust. She also chaired the Tarmac Construction Group and the Rare Breeds Survival Trust. Her devotion to making Chatsworth a viable financial concern was well rewarded in 1981 when a charitable trust, capitalised by the sale of certain treasures, was established to preserve The House for posterity. In 2001 the Duchess published Counting My Chickens… and other home thoughts, a collection of sharply observed musings on Chatsworth, gardening, poultry, dry stone walling, bottled water, the United States, Ireland, the Today programme, the Turner Prize and other topics. On the modern fashion for hiring business consultants, she wryly observed: “He arrives from London, first class on the train… Most probably he has never been this far north, so the geography and the ways of the locals have to be explained, all taking his valuable time.

After a suitable pause of a few weeks (he is very busy being consulted) a beautiful book arrives, telling you what you spent the day telling him.” After her husband’s death in 2004 she published a poignant tribute in Memories of Andrew Devonshire (2007). Other publications included In Tearing Haste: Letters between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor (2008); Home to Roost ... and Other Peckings (2009), a collection of occasional writings; and Wait for Me!... Memoirs of the Youngest Mitford Sister (2010). She was also a contributor to The Spectator and The Daily Telegraph. Her last book, All in One Basket, which brought together two earlier volumes of occasional writings, was published in 2011. The Duchess claimed to buy most of her clothes at agricultural shows, adding: “After agricultural shows, Marks & Spencer is the place to go shopping, and then Paris. Nothing in between seems to be much good.” Her dislikes included magpies; women who want to join men’s clubs; hotel coat-hangers; and drivers who slow down to go over cattle grids.

She regretted the passing of brogues, the custom of mourning, telegrams, the 1662 Prayer Book, pinafores for little boys and Elvis Presley (“the greatest entertainer ever to walk on a stage”). In 2003 she published The Chatsworth Cookery Book, introducing it with the words: “I haven’t cooked since the war.” Debo Devonshire was appointed DCVO in 1999. She is survived by her son Stoker, the 12th Duke of Devonshire, and by two daughters. Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, born March 31 1920, died September 24 2014 Follow the latest Telegraph Obituaries news READ MORE ABOUT:

Question: Who was the youngest of the Mitford sisters who died in 2014 aged 94?
Answer: DEBORAH